Taking off the rough edges

The publication of the article “Young Bucks” in this month´s Fly Fishing and Fly Tying represents a little milestone of sorts for me. It is the 12th of my articles that have appeared in that august publication and I feel very pleased that my modest contributions, if placed end to end, would now span a full year.

The first of these, “Naked Trout Fishing” appeared in July 2010 and the others have turned up intermittently since then. All of them, in their original form, are here on the blog.

I am happy to say that the articles have appeared more or less in their entirety as they were originally written, although the editor, Mark Bowler, has made an effort to take the rough edges off my writing. In particular he has removed any vulgar words and replaced them with something more palatable.

I first noticed this in “Real Men” published in September 2010 when he removed the “balls” of the real men who were standing in icy rivers and converted them to “nether regions” and this month the numb “arses” of boat fishermen where converted into “bums.”

It is clear that Mr Bowler was much better brought up than me and I am grateful for the gentle editing procedure which serves as a means of educating and refining me. My wife has been on a similar mission for over 20 years.